GENNARO CASTALDO WATCH

After his flirtation with computer games last week, Gennaro is back on the music watch - and talking about his own employer, as well. He's had to lay down his Play Station Plus in order to deny that HMV has missed its chance by leaving it until this week to introduce digital downloads to its website:
Gennaro Castaldo, HMV's head of press, denied the music store was late in jumping on the music download bandwagon.

"It's the first time that major players in the UK are launching their own sites - iTunes was the initial catalyst, the fact that we are now launching is the next stage in taking music to the mainstream. The timing is just right," he said.

A potential problem with the service is that it will not be compatible with iPods. Mr Castaldo said: "That's a choice made by Apple and it's one that we regret. Although the iPod is iconic, from a functional point of view, alternative products are just as good.''

He added: "The iPod is a desirable device, but it is fashion-led and fashion tends to move on."

Yes, like the fashion for shopping at record shops, eh, Gennaro? We're obviously a big fan of Gennaro, but we can't let him get away with these - the idea that digital downloads aren't "mainstream" yet in the UK when the bloody Daily Telegraph are flogging them; and Gen-Gen seems to misunderstand what the word catalyst means - it's something which speeds up a reaction, and HMV's slow lumber towards the inevitable hasn't been marked out by anything approaching speed at all.

Oh... and there's absolutely nothing stopping HMV selling downloads which work on iPods - any one of the devices will happily play any MP3 file. It would actually be HMV's choice to only sell hobbled downloads which makes them incompatable, surely?

Virgin Megastores are also launching (or, we suspect, relaunching) their download services this week.

Whatever happened to MyCokeMusic, eh?

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